


Bad dreams

by imsfire



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Bad Dreams, F/M, the need for a good night's sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:28:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24724561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: Jyn has been training herself to wake quietly, not to disturb Cassian when she has a nightmare.
Relationships: Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso
Comments: 6
Kudos: 61





	Bad dreams

**Author's Note:**

> For Day one of Celebrate Rogue One 2020; theme, Jyn and Dreams.

Her father was holding out a holocron to her; not a data-stick or a file disc but a beautiful, intricate thing, hand-carved and inlaid, a treasure some Jedi of old might have owned. His hands shook and she wanted to tell him to stop, to sit down and rest, spare himself, forget about this piece of history; but he activated the device and offered it to her once more. 

The image it projected chilled her. 

The rain was starting again, and it pounded down, through the shimmering blue-white hologram of the Death Star that glittered above Galen’s broken hands. Hoarsely he said “You have to take it, Stardust, it’s my legacy to you. You have to accept it.”

She shook her head, tried to push him away; and the thundering rain beat Galen to the ground and slowly covered him. She couldn’t move, even when he stopped struggling and she knew she had drowned her father without laying a finger on him. But the hologram remained, shining through the raindrops, its piercing green and white light too bright to look at, too bright to outrun.

Jyn woke sweating and shivering. She rolled over with a gasp, her eyes already beginning to adjust to the near-darkness. He was there beside her, a quiet shape, a presence of unmoving stillness. She could hear Cassian’s breathing; soft, slow, deep. Thank the stars. She hadn’t woken him.

Sometimes her night-terrors were so overwhelming that still inside the dream she yelled and struggled, and woke to find him rolling over with shattered eyes, shaking sleep from himself, to hold and steady her. She’d been training herself for a while now, trying to wake quietly when she had a nightmare, to let him sleep on, get the rest he needed.

The window was a ghost outline, a square of grey amid the black; it was night still, no colour visible yet but the light was coming. She lay awake, watching through the shadows, Cassian lying asleep as the hour lifted into dawn; a man of shadow, but a man who worked to keep the light alive, to keep it coming back to life even when it died.

He lay facing her, on his side, with one arm across his chest and the other flat on the bed; empty hands lying soft, face rid of tension, lips gently parted. Relaxed.

Cassian had bad dreams too. More than once she’d woken and found him quivering, fists bunched defensively on his sternum, stifled gasps of air whimpering in his nostrils. When she laid a hand on his forearm, he would gulp and then shudder, and slowly his panting breath would subside into a normal rhythm, and he’d slide into silence again. 

She held on to his arm, each time, until he was completely still once more. Pulse and breathing steady, limbs relaxing and muscles soft in the looseness of healthy sleep.

If by her touch she could bring the smallest comfort, if by learning to control her own nightmares she could reduce the times his night was disturbed, then it was time well spent. Cassian had never wavered in his devotion, to the rebellion and to her. His loyalty fixed and held fast, no matter what the cost. Anything she could give back to him, she would.

Sometimes there were good nights, and mornings when they woke and smiled at the memory, smiled at one another, told their dreams, even laughed…

There would be more. There would be realities to match those good dreams. She lay watching her lover in the dim first light and vowed it, as she had done daily for three years; to him, to the rebellion and to herself. There would be good mornings, quiet ones and peaceful ones, there would be nights when all the nightmares were gone; and one day there would be a morning when the war was over. Even if neither of them were still there to see it, that morning would come.

Meanwhile, a night’s undisturbed sleep was a blessing she could give Cassian, a tiny thing to recompense for all the dangers she’d brought on him, all the risks he’d taken for her sake and for the cause. She laid her hand on his arm for a moment, and then reached across his body, holding him as he slept, and he sighed and shifted towards her, till she felt the living warmth of his breath in the half-light. 

She slept again, a dreamless hour of rest, as the dawn rose, on another day and another mission.


End file.
